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Give people public information

Published: Friday, October 12, 2012 at 10:24 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, October 12, 2012 at 10:24 a.m.

Relying on a legal interpretation of state law, several agencies within our government have recently refused to share public information with the people they are supposed to be serving.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's office has denied that the recent secrecy was coordinated by the governor or his advisers, but its source is not as troubling as its outcome — a denial of people in power to keep the people informed about why and how they are doing what they are doing.

The latest issue involved the refusal of the LSU System to release documents related to the ongoing process of deciding how the state will pay for health care.

Of particular interest here is the state's decision to cut money from the already-stretched Chabert Medical Center's budget. The most-recent round of cuts, which follows two previous cuts, will remove $14.3 million from the charity hospital and could force the layoffs of 245 workers, about 30 percent of its workforce.

How these decisions were made is of vital public importance. It is a public issue that affects many of our people who are most in need of help from the government.

But instead of sharing the process that informed these decisions, the LSU System has refused, like other state agencies before it, to release public information.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge had sought the records, and it published a story earlier this week saying a lawyer for LSU cited an exemption in the state's public-records laws for the "deliberative process."

In 2009, Jindal pushed legislation that shielded from the public records that could be part of his deliberative process. But that exemption does not extend to other state offices, and it is certainly not a blanket exemption for anything state agencies don't want released.

Unfortunately, that is exactly how it is being used.

As is often the case with public officials, Jindal and his appointees are wrongly assuming that refusing to release public information will lessen political scrutiny.

Instead, such indefensible secrecy simply invites suspicion.

Why, for instance, would LSU, which has released information about previous cuts, now seek to hide such relevant public information?

And why would such disparate agencies as LSU, the Department of Education and the Division of Administration suddenly invoke the notion that information about any politically charged issue can be hidden?

If anything, this secrecy should invite the public's skepticism about the state's plans and how various agencies arrive at them.

Why would they want to keep such vital public information secret?

The fact that they do, though, should concern every resident of Louisiana.

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